The Banquet of Plato. An invitation to consider love in a profound sense.

The following text has the purpose of alluding to one of the books, considered by many as the

most beautiful in philosophy as well as in universal literature. We are referring to The Banquet

of Plato, a book written approximately in 385-370 B.C. in the Ancient Greece. What is the

banquet about, why does it have so high an appreciation? These are the questions that we will try

to answer in this essay, in order that the answers may guide us to answer in a conclusive tone this

other question: what can we learn from The Banquet of Plato in our days? The thesis that is tried

to be maintained in the text is that: reflecting on the Banquet permits us to consider love from a

deeper perspective. Because it is considered associated with spiritual desire, with knowledge and

with the supreme value of the good, instead of ordinary considerations of love, which

understands it as a simple biological act. At the same time, the Banquet invites us to reflect on

the fact that beauty resides in the inner things, not in their physical aspect.

What is the banquet about? The banquet is a book by Plato whose main theme is love. The

main argument is that a group of illustrious Greek characters meet at a banquet, but instead of

drinking and overeating as they used to do, they make speeches praising the god Eros, the god of

love. Various characters give their discourses about him, but the most important is the speech of

Socrates (the main character in all of Plato's books) who gives us the most beautiful speech about

love. Eros," Plato tells us on Socrates' lips, "is the son of Poros, the god of eternal riches. But, at

the same time, he is the son of Penia, the personification of poverty. Therefore, love, being in an

intermediate state, is a desire, a desire that tends to the most beautiful riches, but it does so in the

lack and poverty that characterizes it, for this reason its development is eternal, because it will

always need something. In other words, love is a desire for beauty.

 What is the banquet about? The banquet is a book by Plato whose main theme is love. The

main argument is that a group of illustrious Greek characters meet at a banquet, but instead of

drinking and overeating as they used to do, they make speeches praising the god Eros, the god of

love. Various characters give their discourses about him, but the most important is the speech of

Socrates (the main character in all of Plato's books) who gives us the most beautiful speech about

love. Eros, -Plato tells us on Socrates' lips- is the son of Poros, the god of eternal riches. But, at

the same time, he is the son of Penia, the personification of poverty. Therefore, love, being in an

intermediate state, is a desire, a desire that tends to the most beautiful riches, but it does so in the

lack and poverty that characterizes it, for this reason its development is eternal, because it will

always need something. In other words, love is a desire for beauty. In the sense that beauty for

Plato means a transcendence of particular bodily beauty, to the general beauty of the body as

form and from there to the beauty of noble norms, to finally reach the beauty of Good, of the

Good in general. Thus, the love proposed by Socrates is a transcendent love that abandons the

world of appearances and centres on conceiving beauty in the noble ideal of the supreme Good.

Although it will always be recognized that this is an arduous, difficult and unfinished process,

because the Eros has poverty, although it aspires to the richness of thinking of beauty related to

moral and intellectual good.

Bearing in mind what the Banquet alludes to, we can answer that its high esteem is due to the

fact that in this book love is understood in a profound and intellectual sense disassociated from

immediate experiences. Love understood as the beauty that is conceived in the noble ideal of

doing good, and that all thoughts conduct to it. In short, the value of this book is due to the fact

that it helps us to think that love, far from being a simple biological act, is a spiritual act that

guides us to become better people and at the same time to make better people and better actions.